Not only in private houses, but also in industrial and commercial venues, guests often needs to enter with shoe covers on their shoes, which is both hygienic and convenient. Thus, shoe cover dispensing machines appear on the market, and inventors have been trying to explore means to solve the problem of how to dispensing shoe covers rapidly and reliably.
The Chinese patent literature CN2538176 disclosed on Mar. 5, 2003 a shoe cover dispensing machine for solving the problems of inconvenience and bacterial infection of feet which are caused by required shoe-changing when entering certain venues. The machine comprises a main body, standing poles, a footplate, a pushing and releasing mechanism, and etc., forming an automatic device for covering shoe covers onto shoes. This device coordinates with shoe covers to allow a user to place his shoe into this device by simply lifting his foot when he needs to enter the room, so as to allow a disposable soft shoe cover to cover onto the outside of his shoe by associated functioning of various components. Thereby the inconvenience and bacterial cross-infection of feet caused by shoe-changing when entering the room are eliminated, and it also appears to be civilized and elegant. A hole is provided on the machine shell for placing a shoe therein, and a footplate, a shoe cover ouch fixing rod and a shoe cover ouch pushing and releasing mechanism are provided in the machine main body; a spring is jacketed outside the shoe cover ouch fixing rod, and a push ring is provided above the spring; the footplate can move upwards and downwards along its fixing pole; one end of a poking and forking element is connected to the footplate, and the other end is capable of pushing a push block on a movable push plate; the movable push plate is connected to a supporting plate through a rotating shaft, and the supporting plate is provided with a slot allowing the push block on the movable push plate to move therein; a shoe cover ouch baffle is provided above the shoe cover ouch fixing rod, each shoe cover has an elastic mouth, and shoe cover ouches are provided on the mouth. This shoe cover dispensing machine is capable of operating automatically, and is very convenient to use.
However, the deficiencies of the aforementioned patent technology are also obvious, i.e., it is very inconvenient to replace the back-up shoe covers. To solve this problem, the Chinese patent literature CN2626864 disclosed on Jul. 21, 2004 a shoe cover dispensing machine. A hole is provided on the machine shell for placing a shoe therein, and a footplate, a shoe cover ouch fixing rod and a shoe cover ouch pushing and releasing mechanism are provided in the machine main body; a spring is jacketed outside the shoe cover ouch fixing rod, and a push ring is provided above the spring; the footplate can move upwards and downwards along its fixing pole. One end of a poking and forking element is connected to the footplate, and the other end is capable of pushing a push block on a movable push plate; the movable push plate is connected to a supporting plate through a rotating shaft, and the supporting plate is provided with a slot allowing the push block on the movable push plate to move therein; a shoe cover ouch baffle is provided above the shoe cover ouch fixing rod, each shoe cover has an elastic mouth, and shoe cover ouches are provided on the mouth. This shoe cover dispensing machine is characterized in its simple structure and convenient use.
In the aforementioned second patent technology, when replacing with new shoe covers, the pressing plate is pushed downward and fixed with hooks, which makes the replacing of shoe covers become convenient to a certain extent, but the problem is not solved completely, because of the fact that when pre-storing shoe covers, the shoe covers need to be propped open one by one, and mounted onto the fixing rod one by one. These types of technologies are not only inconvenient to replace (pre-store) shoe covers, but also have the problems of less amount of pre-stored shoe covers, lack of operating reliability, and etc.